Unlocking the power of sport in transformative placemaking
welcome to the future of Tourism podcast I'm David peacock stop owning your own contents young leaders are stepping up bring everyone to the table and imagine they're wild anew [Music] sporting events have the power to engage unify and a noble people but what happens when destination organizations and event organizers work in Partnership to take these events to the next level the Maryland Cycling Classic in September 2022 is a remarkable case study on how multiple partners and organizations work together to unlock the power of a mass participation sport event to both build community and share authentic stories of place held in Baltimore Maryland the 120.4 mile race and it was a resounding success in short it was an event that engaged and inspired a community and at the same time created an incredible platform and Spotlight to authentically share that Community with the world one thing Shone through in the global coverage of the Maryland classic and that was authentic Baltimore you couldn't miss it Al Hutchinson is the CEO of visit Baltimore he's a friend and a peer and a remarkable advocate for using tourism's potential to empower and Elevate people and places Steve Brenner the president of KLM Sports Marketing brings his three decades of experience in unlocking the power of sport to engage unify and the noble people good morning Steve good morning Al how are you Al you first where are you what's it like how are you good morning good morning David good to see you Steve good to see you my friend I'm uh here in Baltimore city charm city today it's Friday and uh it's been a busy week although we you know had a little time off because of the Fourth of July weekend but it's been busy and just here doing doing the Lord's work as they say trying to make sure all about visitors enjoy the great city of Baltimore good stuff Steve good morning how about you here in my offices in a lovely Colorado Springs and I've been busy cracking at the 2023 Maryland Cycling Classic kind of my Bane in my existence for the next uh two months leading into the event so but that's what I signed up for happily and look forward to this year's event well very cool um so this is predominantly a tourism development audience and tourism management tourism planning audience Steve can you paint a little picture of a UCI event for us and and the Maryland classic in particular and why it's important yeah I mean historically you know cycling events if you go all the way back to the origination of the Tour de France which takes us all the way back to 1903 tourism objectives were woven in to the way that the national government looked at taking a cycling event as a platform and mobilizing that around the country and so you see that now in Italy with the tour of Italy uh with this particular event it's a one-day event versus a 21 day event and then through that process we've created a classic and so under if you looked at the international calendar there's these one-day events that are called Classics as opposed to tours and that's what we've modified and created in Maryland and so it's the top ranked event in the U.S uh you know for road racing so we happily put it on in the backyard of Baltimore and our friends there and then with the state support we visit Baltimore the city of uh Baltimore and also with Baltimore con and we've had a really happy marriage in order to get the platform up and running and why that's key is that if you don't have the Civic Partners as your foundational uh Partners in the overall scheme of things you're never going to be able to run event like this so when we're talking about worldwide TV and we're talking about closing 200 kilometers of Roads that's a huge you know it's really a huge undertaking and so you got to have your Civic Partners invested in this like visit Baltimore Al's been a great advocate of what we've been doing and so I think when you're looking at uh the level of event we're talking about and the Simplicity of just saying it's a one day event we got some of the best riders in the world coming it's winner winner go home so uh top top guy wins it it's not like the Tour de France and you have to wait 21 days excellent and the coverage of this is international we'll have 80 countries plus this year uh Eurosport plus uh Global Sports Network we've got our own app called tour tracker which anybody can tap into on the home website and then we've got a new partnership this year with Maryland Public Television which hits six state region which is really cool that's that's amazing Al when did this first come into your Consciousness and then I'll then I'll tell you I'll tell you a story about how I came and why Consciousness Halfway Around the World watching a PowerPoint that Steve was doing but when did it come into yours well and Steve knows this I mean we started working on this when the whole world changed in 2020.
um we were supposed to have the first Maryland Cycling Classic Labor Day weekend of 2020 and um so Steve and his team been very gracious through this whole process Maryland Sports you know our colleague Terry Hazelton has been a great cheerleader and obviously the city and the state but but look the the beauty of this event my job is to bring economic Vitality to Baltimore City into the region and you said it earlier David but the beauty of sports like music sort of transcends everything it brings people together and so this type of event uh cycling event brings Community together um I think in a city like ball Baltimore is very appealing because cycling is somewhat of not known to many folks in the inner city of Baltimore although cycling is big in Maryland and big in Baltimore city but there are a lot of communities and a lot of underserved communities that are unaware of it so we can bring an event like this International Event you know tip the five-star athletes coming in to perform and you can share this genre with a community who may be somewhat unfamiliar but then you can show them the the greatness of this event the beauty of it the athletic appeal and then they're able to find and identify a new opportunity and you know it brings a smile to the face of a young child who doesn't have a bike right and and Steve and his team's credit doing community give back was very important piece of this overall athletic event so this has been a I think a beautiful gesture beautiful opportunity obviously it has great economics to it and that's part of the reason you do it but you also want to do it to uplift communities and bring people together and I think that's what sports does and I'm very excited about looking forward to this year's cycling event you know Labor Day weekend to be here before all of us know it and I know Steve and his team are working very hard as well as to visit Baltimore folks so this is something that means a lot to Baltimore and to the state of Maryland and so we're we're very excited that it's here we want to keep it here and we want to grow it and make sure it's uh celebrated by the entire Community well and the community piece was remarkable I I think I've told you both this story and a lot of people we were halfway around the world and I'm watching a presentation in a room full of professional cyclist management professional cyclists teams professional cyclists and Steven stood up and started a presentation that really if I could sum it up it was all about Baltimore it was about this great event but layered in there so evidently was Baltimore and that whole sense of community and Steve you painted a picture it's not a day event it's a three or four day event in fact it probably starts almost the fifth day before the advantage starts tell me a little bit about some of the dimensions to that Community piece Steve the articulated really well in that presentation there was there's the school stuff there was the city stuff there was Merchants a little bit on that please yeah I think we were used uh my company Kom and in our event management partner middle of sports uh we had traditionally done through California tour of Colorado a tour of Alberta I mean we've we've done these massive week-long events and when you have a week-long event sometimes you're diving in and out of the communities it's great but it's all about just the race because that's all you have time for when you're in there with the exception maybe of the the overall start City um so in reimagining the model one of the key things and indicators was looking at the definition of the community impact and having that Community impact fronted and making sure that it connects with the personality of that community so yeah we took but by Design and with great uh fostering great relationships would visit Baltimore Al staff and and even Al's Vision on this Terry hasselton's Vision on the state with the sport and entertainment down to Mayor Scott and Johnny oloweski in the uh in the county and uh Leonard Howie when he was with the county and there was a lot of foresight on community impact and luckily you know with some of my background I had done a lot of community impact programs and Sport and so we wanted to customize a program and look at what we could do so the first year you know we were beta testing uh looking at schools um and we had a community give back of 50 bikes and 50 helmets in partnership with United Healthcare this year we're going to add a couple schools we're also taking our education curriculum which is literally a booklet of 10 lesson plans uh that we're going to include 15 Title One schools in Baltimore and so that impact goes to education it goes to literally trying to look at where and how we can get kids on bikes the Holy Grail is to continue to evolve that program so it goes throughout the entire city and even into the state and seeing where and how we can get kids bikes and so that's a tall order because that's a lot of bikes but the program is to go year over year and continue to build on that so we have a community day on Thursday with uh School visits with athletes and some ambassadors we have followed up by a community bike Jam at Patterson Park which is not too far from the finish line and that Community bike Jam we did last year it's like a bike rodeo with different stations and that's meant to obviously get kids families and a lot of to Al's point you know some families that have not been exposed to cycling and to get them on bikes or at least so we had a helmet giveaways and we'll have some of that as well at the at the community bike champ it's also a way to communicate and directly communicate with neighborhoods and in this case with a wrecks and Parks looking at what we can do to create the spirit of the community around the bike and that's super important for a weekend event like this we think that program the bike Jam could grow year over year to do multiple parts and do it throughout the summer so we can extend it you know out 90 to 120 days and that's what we've talked about and then finally the you know on Saturday we do a charity ride that one's up in the county uh and I think we'll continue to evolve and redefine that with our partners John Kelly who's our chairman and uh one of the partners of Kelly benefits is hosting that and so the charitable give back uh is important too and how we try to build that out and then uh we'll do a public team introduction eligible for that last time to parade the athletes uh and give a sense of this is an international almost Olympic field to the event and that was well received that's in a different District in Baltimore and then finally you know the uh the race itself which connects the county you know to the city and so even the route itself is its own marketing vehicle and it was done by Design I mean it was done to look at okay where in Baltimore can we take this and we can take it anywhere right but making sure we knit together the various neighborhoods in central Baltimore was an objective the Inner Harbor is a very famed area you know I have done bike races in the past but going all the way back to the 1990s in Baltimore so uh very familiar with that area which helped me certainly I re-identify uh and re-engage with that district and in that area knowing that it really is a world-class visual uh which I think carries over on it's kind of this postcard to the world so you can see that I think a cycling event as a platform going back to your original question uh does some unique things uh because of its venue that a set venue in an arena can't do and one of those things that's so powerful is knitting together those neighborhoods and sending that postcard out to the world I I think that's super well articulated and then talking about that Al you gotta you got a program that in the end it's a world-class race 16 teams more than 100 Elite cyclists it becomes a week-long festival charity for Bridges of Hope raises significant six figures citizens ride safety clinics but that's now before it all started you've got this concept 2020 pre-covered to make it even more difficult what was you thinking who what was the hard part how did you move and inspire people at that point how did you bring in those unusual suspects that created this massive Mosaic of participation how'd you do it well I you know the truth on this one is it was very difficult and Steve can remember this anytime you're you're bringing in public and private sector folks to try to put on an event like this in the midst of the pandemic of our lifetime when when essentially we're just trying to keep people healthy and Alive um that that's a tough backdrop to have this kind of conversation right so it took um a number of of phone calls a number of meetings that Steve and I were a part of especially getting uh our city folks on board with this it wasn't the lack of vision of making this happen but it was the city was being pulled in a number of different directions just trying to keep their residents um alive and giving them the proper information and now we want to bring an event to the city and it was a tough conversation but I think the beauty of coming into a city like Baltimore Sports we do this every day you know fortunately with the Baltimore Ravens the Baltimore Orioles here we know Sports we do a number of sporting events from whether it's racing street racing events Army and Navy football games so we had a track record of how to put on a big sporting event cycling yes may be a little bit unique but I think once we had good conversations with the city the state as a partner and then the private sector folks really saw how this event could really touch community and I think really the beauty of trying to do these big events now is if you can make that connection to yeah this is an event but then how does it talk and connect to the hearts of your residents you know there's a lexicon in my business called Community shared value and and really in the tourism space the cycling event really just that's that's the definition of it it's a shared value event where you have these cyclists going through communities neighborhoods and you get those folks engaged we we did Outreach to Neighborhood associations to inform them and educate them to what this race really was all about we had those neighborhoods open up and they were a part of it I think that's where this race could really grow to get more of our neighborhoods involved and to celebrate the beauty of sports but also in the time that all of us are living in right now anytime you can bring an event in to help people feel better about their Community feel better about where they are in their space life and time it makes sense and that's what this event I think is the the real big lead behind that we're going to do we're going to leave the community better than it was before the Maryland cycling class it came to Baltimore so this is a iconic event for us that I think is really going to help to improve the way uh residents live and do things day to day here in Baltimore so in in the world of Television we'd say you know the event is the a role and everything else is the b-roll I will tell you watching Steve's presentation and going back online and look at some YouTube stuff the b-roll of Baltimore the people enjoying the event the people engaged in the event the smiles the enthusiasm of those kids in the school that is gold that's the I call that the Oscar B role of the year like it's really great to see that stuff Steve it's great when it works out what's your biggest memory of challenge along the way there must have been a ton of them and I mean not not the least of it again is launching right at the heart of covid I think a year later Al we were meeting in Baltimore for a DI annual at 21. you still had a year of covet to go to get to the event right Steve what do you remember uh one of the things that sticks out is the community bike jam it wasn't even the event itself and I'll get to that in a second but um we had a uh athlete in former athlete Fred Rodriguez um who grew up he was born in Bogota grew up in LA lives in the Bay Area went on uh to uh win a stage of the tour of Italy which is the second biggest race in the world four-time U.S national champion uh really decorated Rider he was out and he was um working with some kids and he got uh this I want to say the kid was about six or seven years old to ride his bike for the first time and his mom uh broke down in tears and said I've been trying to get my son to ride a bike for a year you did it in 15 minutes that's magic I mean that's that's what this is you want to talk about impact and yeah it's on a one-to-one level but sometimes that's what it's what makes it so distinguishable and I think um you know there are definitely some economic boundaries uh that cycling faces and so our job is this major International platform should be to see how we can Steward something greater than just this International Event because it is this lightning rod for uh for media attention worldwide but then how do you do that you got to build platforms that you can thread some of these things through to touch communities to Al's point so the things like the route and then all the way down to that one-to-one experience are all important in my opinion and then if you looked at the event itself what really registered with uh with me uh was seeing the excitement of uh you know I'll give this uh props to uh we're dealing with Morgan one of Val's um someone works for Al and she had worked with us for about five months on this project leading in and she just couldn't Envision what was going to go on I remember uh standing with her you know as the uh lead riders came in for the first circuit and she was just like oh my God this is one of the most exciting things I've ever seen wow she was almost speechless and so to see the reaction of the key stakeholders that you have and that was she wasn't the only one they were probably uh I could cite a dozen examples uh of people that were really energized by the positive and energetic Vibe of the event and as someone who's been in international sports their whole life maybe sometimes I take it for granted um just because I've been around some of these things but I never take for granted the Deliverance of an experience and that's kind of what that embellished and so yeah it never gets old when you get people to an event and see the positivity around what a sport or entertainment vehicle can mean and back to Al's Point bridging to what he said so critical now more than ever to help build that community and that positive vibe there's nothing negative about it that's what I love about sports you know let alone cycling but you know sport is all positive it had a positive impact in my life when I was a competitor and you know it's nothing better than Kenneth Foster and Stuart that with your key stakeholders hey Steve I can add that Morgan she's changed forever because of that situation trust me but now she totally enjoyed it and she's a rock star as you know but one of the things I want to add to this conversation and sometimes and we may take for granted but have an event like the Maryland Cycling Classic come into a city like Baltimore we were able to engage with a number of small business owners um sort of Mind pie coffee shops folks who produce tea here in Baltimore they were able to be involved in this event and uh you know sell their Wares to an international audience and people coming in and over Labor Day weekend which sometimes in Baltimore is a little slower time of the year kids going back to school but the small business owners in Baltimore bringing a International Event like the Cycling Classic to our community it's big for a lot of these small businesses and I never take that for granted because um that's really the backbone of what we do here small businesses sort of Drive things and if you can take those businesses and sort of parlay them up to an event and help support each other it's a big story and so I I'm really excited about that relationship and how we can really get more and more small businesses involved in the Cycling Classic coming up in the future fantastic so guys I know you both you come at this at 100 10 all the time Al your work on building communities and steering just positive development is great Steve you're you're I think your Beginnings in amateur sport really inform what you do and I find you to be incredibly caring about the things you do but I still gotta say what we saw in the Maryland classic and the work you guys did together went above and beyond what we're used to in the industry tell me it was exceptional work wasn't it it was hard work it was new work there were there were all sorts of new things to it weren't there yeah I will say that what makes Baltimore this is going to sound like a cliche but it's not in my opinion as someone who lives in Colorado doing an event in Maryland you would say how can you author an opinion on this but maybe I'm a good person to author an opinion on this is that uh Baltimore's people is what really makes it special and we had a lot of people being honest with the situation ask us Chris Arnold and I why Baltimore why Maryland and all that and it's like my whole response was why not what what do you know about the community these are people who have not been to the community so our job is to get people to Baltimore so they can experience all the great things that I know I've experienced Chris's experience and the people that come in from out of town are like wow this is a really cool community and the people are special they really are and you know I'm originally from the Milwaukee area and it reminds me a lot of that you know there's a lot of grit in the city there's a lot of like pride and I think the neighborhoods and the way the neighborhoods look at things are uh you know it's it's a community you know I think we need to Foster that and I think a bike race can you know can do that kind of things I mean I you know I'm a passionate guy and you know sometimes emotional about these things because I think if you care about the project you're doing and the impact then you can Elevate what you're doing if you're going to be apathetic then you're not really serving a purpose in this world or even for the project that you're working on and so going back to why is this different it's been the people it really has it's been the AL Hutchinson's Brandon Scott the mayor uh Cherry hasseltine John Kelly I mean it's it's a phenomenal executive group here that has approached this and to Al's point it's great to have a vision but then you got to execute on that vision and then you got to build all the vision but I think that's what has made this special at least for me yeah and Steve if I could just number one say thank you for that and I often tell people the number one asset in Baltimore and in the Baltimore region without a doubt are the people and these the people here they care they care about their Community they care about each other and I think sometimes Baltimore has this misperception around the globe but once people come and really see Baltimore and we we use the crab metaphor a lot here because a crab has their heart outer shell but once you open that crab up and get splashed with all that flavor that's when you really get to know Baltimore and that's really that's really who Baltimore is there's a lot of great neighborhoods great people everyone's they're all a little different they're from different vibe but all of them care and love love this community well just rounding it out here out you're you're just wrapping up your presidency seat at the destinations International you talked about the um the the Lexicon we use Community shared value I would say uh the Baltimore Maryland classic is one of the best examples of a well-engaged stakeholder Network who take an active role in collectively shaping the future of an event or place I think that's a textbook definition on this one I think you've done a ton for Network building not just in Baltimore but at all the places you've been Steve it's so great to meet people like you from the other side of the Ledger who care just as much about people in places this has been a remarkable journey I can't wait to see the 2023 I know it's a lot of work but I'm sure it'll all be worth it final thoughts to our peers as we close out just one last thought I'll go you first Al and then you Steve well look first of all as always I thank you David for this platform and and Steve nothing but love for you and your your team for your confidence in our community and what what I would close with I I would say all of us as Leaders folks who are listening on this podcast we're living in a great time in in this country and in this world and I think the world is looking for the best leadership possible and whether you're in cycling whether you're selling destinations like I'm doing we should all be doing what we can to uplift one another and uplift each other's communities to make the communities better places to live for our kids our grandkids and celebrate life and celebrate goodness and celebrate all the contributions we make and I I that's why when I get up in the morning that's what makes makes me come alive I want to do something special for Baltimore that people say you know what this is a great place to live great place to work and a great place to play so let's do our part to be the best leaders we can be but also make wherever we live and work the best destinations to live in out I don't know if I can follow that up that was so eloquent you know it really was I mean it summarizes everything I think that we aspire to as event promoters and uh as I mentioned earlier you got to be vested in the project you also got to be invested in the community and the people that you're impacting so the epicenter has always been Baltimore then Maryland and as we kind of spoke out the East Coast U.S we've also got an international component to what we're trying to do to drive that so it's a heavy burden but if you're taking bite sizes out of what you're trying to do and you plot this with the right people with the right Vision you can do this over a period of a few years and you ultimately get to your goal the Tour de France now is in its 110th year there's a reason why it perpetuates this great image of France and its people and why it's become a destination for people to come to so that's our goal here you know we want people coming in from out of town to experience what some of the people in Baltimore experienced last year and anecdotally I know already I met people from North Carolina from Boston from DC from Atlanta all last year just running into and even including a couple from Belgium and Germany and I thought they were coming in to maybe go no they came specifically for the event and to see Baltimore that's what Al you know wants to see that's what as us as a marketing and promoting group needs to continue to perpetuate so I'll leave it with one thing that that uh Mayor Scott said in our debrief uh in December he walked in and the first thing he said was transformation and every kind of looked at him he said anybody he used use that word saying this event was transformational for the community we got to find a way to make this a pillar of our community moving forward wow I mean if that wasn't a statement for the collective work of everybody in that room and there were about 30. from Chief of Police to had a park and rec to represent from visit Baltimore to Terry hasseltine's group to the state and medalist to KLM that that's what you damn a mayor of a major Metropolitan City saying that means we made an impact but it doesn't mean that's the only line it means now great we've earned the right to go to the next level um and we got to do it in concert with the city and with the state and I think we'll continue to have good things happen so for me that's what it's like keep pushing keep pushing for good things and good things are going to happen and the final thing to you know just summarize what Allen said from my perspective which is it really is about impact and uh if the community that you're impacting looks favorably at the end result of what you're doing you know you're on the right track and we saw that last year well tourism done well enriches the lives of Citizens First Travelers second and I has no passion that this was a transformative enriching event it's a real pleasure to work with both you keep up the great work thanks for being here guys
2023-07-27 08:45
